SBI to launch mobile wallet for feature phone this December

BHUBANESHWAR: State Bank of India (SBI) chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya on Thursday said the bank will come up with a mobile wallet for feature phones by first half of this December. She said the bank has already launched a mobile wallet 'State Bank Buddy' for smart phone users. Bhattacharya said this to mediapersons at SBI's local head office here during her Odisha visit. She said people, who do not have smartphones, can use this software tool for money transaction through their feature phones.

"We are working with BSNL in order to bring a mobile wallets for feature phone. It is likely to come up in the first half of December," she added.

Following the demonetization move, demands for point-of-sale (POS) machines have increased across the country. Bhattacharya said they have received a very large number of requests for POS machines. "Every day we are getting a few thousand requests for POS machines. We have now 40,000 machines working. We have placed orders for purchase of 1.5 lakh more machines. We will meet the demand soon," she added.

Thursday was the first pay day rush for banks after demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. When she was asked about her experience about the pay day rush, the SBI boss said there has been no untoward incident reported though queues were longer at places. "At 3 pm on Thursday when I last checked, 40,000 out of the 48,000 ATMs were dispensing cash. Long queues as such are normal on pay-days, but this time they were longer because of Rs 2,500 per person per day limit through ATMs," she added.

She further said that the SBI has recalibrated most of its ATMs. "We will complete the process within one or two days. In Odisha, all the ATMs are recalibrated," she said. To help the rural people during this demonetization process, Bhattacharya said they have deployed business correspondents (BCs) for banking transactions. "We have 56,000 BCs across the country to help the rural mass, out of which only 33,000 are actually active. In Odisha, we have 3,376 BCs and 97 per cent of them are active," she added.